Articles by Tom Philpott
Tom Philpott was previously Grist's food writer. He now writes for Mother Jones.
All Articles
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As fertilizer flows from the Midwest, a vast algae bloom thrives below the Mississippi
Every year since the early 1980s, a monstrous algae bloom has risen up in the Gulf of Mexico, fed by fertilizer runoff from Midwest farms. The nasty growth sucks oxygen from the ocean beneath it — snuffing out sea life even as climate change and other human-induced factors threaten the globe’s fish stocks. Ironically, as […]
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Tomato salmonella scare hits the big time
Insert everything I said in this post, except now the salmonella-tainted tomato scare has gone nationwide, whereas before, the FDA had been limiting its warning to Texas and New Mexico. Here is Associated Press: Federal officials hunted for the source of a salmonella outbreak in Connecticut and 16 other states linked to three types of […]
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The U.S. media discover how food production works without access to cheap oil
The story is legendary in peak-oil circles: Twenty years ago, the Soviet Union pulled the plug on Cuba’s cheap-energy, cheap-food era. (See Bill McKibben’s feature piece on the subject here.) No longer would the fading superpower accept the tiny island nation’s sugar as payment for crude oil. From then on, only hard currency would do. […]
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U.S. officials dither while antibiotic-resistant bacteria strains creep into our pork supply
In Meat Wagon, we round up the latest outrages from the meat and livestock industries. The good news is that people are earnestly trying to figure out if a deadly antibiotic-resistant bacteria strain is infecting our nation’s vast supply of pork. The bad news is, they don’t work for a government regulator with the power […]
